


kiss you twice ‘cause it’s gonna be alright

by dearzoemurphy



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Jeff Winger POV, Post-Episode: s05e13 Basic Sandwich, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29127324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearzoemurphy/pseuds/dearzoemurphy
Summary: “Hey. What are you doing out here?” he asks, turning to face her.Britta looks down at the cold concrete and grips the edge of the step that she’s sitting on the slightest bit tighter. “Nothing. Just taking a moment alone.”“Yeah, that was some pretty intense stuff today, almost getting locked in a bunker for the rest of our lives,” Jeff remarks.“Sha.” Britta laughs, because what else is there to do? Theydidalmost get trapped in a bunker underneath their school for the rest of their lives, with only each other, a mad scientist, and his crazy robot for company. If she’d said anything else more substantial, the weight of the situation might have crushed them both.Jeff finds Britta outside the Greendale library after the school is saved. Set after episode 05x13: Basic Sandwich.
Relationships: Britta Perry/Jeff Winger
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30





	kiss you twice ‘cause it’s gonna be alright

**Author's Note:**

> oops I stayed up late to write this all in one sitting since inspiration struck as I was laying down to go to sleep!! I know I’ll pay for this tomorrow lol but I hope you all enjoy!!
> 
> (also this whole thing is loosely inspired by Paper Rings by Taylor Swift, title comes from the song)

He finds her on the front steps of the library, sitting alone in the glow of the single streetlight beside the building.

Something compels him to leave the rest of the group - offering up some weak excuse to them - and go sit by her. She gives him a nod of acknowledgment as he climbs up the steps to meet her and settles himself into place, bringing one knee towards his chest and wrapping his arms around it.

“Hey. What are you doing out here?” he asks, turning to face her.

Britta looks down at the cold concrete and grips the edge of the step that she’s sitting on the slightest bit tighter. “Nothing. Just taking a moment alone.”

“Yeah, that was some pretty intense stuff today, almost getting locked in a bunker for the rest of our lives,” Jeff remarks.

“Sha.” Britta laughs, because what else is there to do? They _did_ almost get trapped in a bunker underneath their school for the rest of their lives, with only each other, a mad scientist, and his crazy robot for company. If she’d said anything else more substantial, the weight of the situation might have crushed them both.

“I think we would have been fine, though. The Dean’s a natural entertainer, not to mention Abed’s skill with stand-up comedy. And Annie probably would have made a plan to get us out eventually.”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

Britta looks up, and Jeff is glad that she does, because she’s always more beautiful at night. He’d always thought so, but never once dared to tell her. She’d probably think that it was part of some scheme and call him a con man. She might be right, in that case. Jeff couldn’t always be sure of what his own intentions even were.

“Um, I know that we saved the school and called everything off, but…do you think we could talk about the thing from earlier?” she asks, almost shy as she tucks her hair behind her ears and lifts her head enough to properly meet Jeff’s gaze.

“You’re going to have to be more specific, a lot’s happened today, and I think I’ve already forgotten half of it.”

She scoffs. “You proposing to me, of course. It’s the one thing we didn’t really talk about after we won.”

“We did talk about it,” Jeff reasons, “We called it off.”

“Yeah. But…can I just ask one question?”

“Just one?”

“Mhm. That’s all I want, then we never have to talk about this again.”

Jeff makes a show of hemming and hawing for a moment, only to get her riled up enough that she reaches over to playfully sock him in the arm.

“Alright, alright! One question, shoot.”

“Why did you do it?”

The answer was right there on the tip of his tongue. Because I panicked. Because this place is all I have. Because losing Annie and Abed seems almost inevitable, but you’re still within reach. Because you’re the best part about this whole godforsaken place, and maybe if I could keep you, losing the rest wouldn’t be so bad. Because we have history, because everything that’s happened in these past few years has meant _something_ , does it mean something to you, too? It can’t mean nothing. I can’t mean nothing to you. You wanted to hold onto me, right? Because that’s all I really wanted. I wanted someone to hold onto me. I wanted you to hold onto me. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted since the day I first laid eyes on you and-

“Hello? Earth to Jeff?”

When he snaps back to reality, she’s waving a hand in front of his face, nervously chewing on her lip as if she feels responsible for breaking him. In a way, she is. But he would never curse her with that knowledge.

“Oh, sorry. What was the question again?”

Britta sighs. “Why did you do it? Why did you propose to me?”

He sighs.

“Because I was scared. I really was, Britta, I was scared. I mean, think about it. I’m 40 years old. If I want a family…my time’s running out. And Greendale shutting down seemed like the window of opportunity I’ve been waiting for, and you were standing there, and I know you, so it seemed right in the moment.”

Britta nods, seeming satisfied with the answer. “Okay. Thanks. And, you know…40 isn’t too late. You’ve still got your whole life ahead of you.”

Jeff scoffs, so she protests, “I’m serious!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve still got plenty of time.”

“It doesn’t sound like you believe that.”

“Okay, well, I don’t. Is that what you want to hear?”

“It’s not what I want to hear,” Britta says with a huff, “but I’d rather you tell the truth than lie to me, okay? We’ve been through enough at this point that I hope you can trust me with most anything.”

It’s the way she sounds positively dejected that draws Jeff back to her.

“I’m sorry. I just…don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“Oh, it’s been _years_ since I’ve felt anything resembling pity for you,” Britta jokes, as she’s unable to stop the broad grin that’s spreading across her face, “But please, trust me, _you have time_. Not everyone operates on the same schedule, okay? You can still have a little Jeff and a little whoever the poor mother is.”

He laughs, then retreats into a ball, now bringing both knees to his chest. “Okay. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Of course.” She smiles and reaches over to place a hand on one of his knees, and it’s impossible for Jeff’s gaze not to drift down to her lips and think about the way it had felt to run his hands through her hair and pull her close for the first time in years; earlier in the study room before everything really went to shit.

“Hey, so, you got your question. Can I ask one too?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Why did you say yes?”

She looks down again, purposefully averting her gaze from his. He gives her a moment to produce an answer, deciding not to push her since she hadn’t pushed him.

“I guess…it seemed like the best option. At that point, my choices were to keep bartending and living alone or pack up and move out with you. Getting out of here and not being alone seemed better than staying here alone.”

“That makes sense,” Jeff says, because it does. “I’m just surprised, since I didn’t even have a ring or anything.”

Britta laughs. “You know that I try not to be materialistic. And the ring is just another symbol of the patriarchal roots of marriage! It’s like you’re…you’re tying something on a woman to announce to the world that you’ve claimed her. It’s gross, it’s what that is.”

“Well, in that case…” Jeff reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and roots around for a moment before discovering the item he’d been searching for. He pulls out the crumpled receipt and begins smoothing it over his legs before methodically creasing it and rolling it up into a long thin tube.

“Jeff? What are you doing?”

“Hold out your hand.”

Despite probably seeing where he was going with this, Britta does anyway. Delicately, he takes the tube and wraps it twice around her ring finger, carefully tying it into a knot on top once he’s done.

“There. Your ring. You can keep it, I don’t want it back.”

She holds it up to her face, inspecting it as if it’s truly made of gold and set with the finest diamonds. “Oh, it’s beautiful. No woman would ever say no to a ring like this,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. But she still keeps it on. When she brings her hands back into her lap, her other hand even starts fidgeting with the knot, seemingly with the care not to rip the thing right in half.

“You know…it would have been pretty stupid to get married now,” he says as he watches her continue to play with his ring.

“Duh doy.”

Jeff almost winces at how quickly she says it, but buries his reflexive disappointment before she can sense it. “However, uh, what do you think about making some kind of pact?”

“What kind of pact?”

“Like one of those ‘if we’re both single in five years’ kind of pacts.”

She goes quiet, and he’s worried that he’s now fucked things up beyond belief. The silence feels like a cold, unfeeling eternity until her voice pierces the veil.

“Yeah, I’d be into that.”

“Really?”

“Well, if you keep asking me, I might change my mind.”

“Fair enough,” Jeff says with a laugh that comes out more like a sigh of relief, “and…do you think that’s a good deal? In five years, if no one else comes along, we get married for real?”

“We’ve almost done it three times at this point, haven’t we? The fourth time’s probably the charm.”

“It’s supposed to be the third time.”

“Yeah, but we’re both bad at math, so that seems about right,” she reasons.

He stares at her like the magnificent force of nature that she is, and can’t help but let more words slip out of his mouth.

“Can I get one more question?”

“Only if I get another as well.”

“Okay. What made you say yes to this?”

A thin smile tugs up the corners of her mouth and she looks bashfully back down at her receipt paper ring. “Well, what else am I gonna do with my life? My chances of leaving here get slimmer every day, but maybe together, we’d have enough courage to truly get out of here. And…it pains me to admit it, but I’ve always liked your company. It’s one of the few things I think I could tolerate for the rest of my life.”

“ _Really_?! You think you could tolerate my company?”

She laughs. “Yeah. You keep me on my toes. At least life with you would be…different. Something like an adventure. Something more like my anarchist days.”

“Yeah. Well…for what it’s worth, I think I could tolerate your company for the rest of my life, too.”

She must sense that he’s getting embarrassingly choked up, because she says, “Aw, don’t get too sappy on me, Winger.”

“I won’t,” he promises, “It’s just been a long day. And…it might be stress talking, but I’ve always liked the idea of moving out and settling down somewhere else. And I liked the idea of doing it with you even more.”

It’s embarrassing the way the words are spilling out of him now. And he’s helpless against it, entirely unable to stop talking when he’s staring Britta right in the face; making his next moves solely based on instinct.

“Why?”

“Is that your question?”

“Sure.”

He breathes, because it’s the only thing he can concentrate on when he’s now consciously trying to open up an emotional dam that’s been carefully constructed to keep everything in at all costs.

 _“Because you’re everything I’ve ever wanted out of a partner,”_ he thinks.

Except, he must not have thought it. Unless Britta’s developed mind reading abilities, he _definitely_ just said it out loud.

“Wow. I didn’t expect that,” she says, clearly in shock.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because…”

Because I don’t want to make things awkward? Because I don’t want to ruin anything else today? Because you’ve always been my lifeline and I couldn’t bear to lose any more of you than I already have?

“Because you’re my friend. And I didn’t mean to jeopardize that,” is what he eventually settles on.

“Oh. If it’s any consolation, you jeopardized that earlier when you outright asked me to marry you. And, if you might recall, I said yes.”

Jeff meets her gaze again, and her eyes are shining brighter than the stars. “I might recall that, yes.”

“ _Obviously_ , both of us are bad at talking about our feelings. That basically goes without saying. So…if you’ll let me make a request…”

“Sure, why not.”

“I think you should kiss me,” she says, her right hand ceasing its fidgeting with her ring to slide itself over to his arm, “and we can maybe just go from there?”

“Yeah,” he replies, feeling a joyful laugh start to bubble up inside of him, “That sounds great. I think I’m better at kissing than I am at talking, anyway.” The response sounded better in his head, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do about it except hope that Britta finds it charming.

She rolls her eyes at the joke and hums in false consideration. “That’s certainly debatable.”

“Oh, so you want to admit that I have a silver tongue?”

“Nah, I’d be making _you_ admit that you’re an awful kisser.”

“Rude.”

“You’re rude!”

“How am I the one being rude?”

“Just…” she lets out an exasperated huff, “are you gonna jam your tongue down my throat or what?”

Jeff takes that as his cue not to wait any longer, cupping her face with both his hands and diving right back into her. He makes sure to have a little more tact than actually outright shoving his tongue down her throat, but their respective neediness comes across well enough anyways. He pulls back after a moment, and Britta basically whines at the lack of contact.

“Just one thing. We can kiss now, talk tomorrow?”

“Of course! That’s what I meant by going from here, dummy,” she says, clearly trying hard to remain playful when really, all she wants is to be kissing him once more. Jeff would normally revel in her clear desperation. However, he surprises himself by finding more joy in the thought of finally working towards building something real, something solid with her in the future.

“Okay, good. Just wanted to check.”

She rolls her eyes and practically grabs him to pull him back in, her ring brushing against the back of his neck as she does so.

And in that moment, Jeff knows that she’ll be with him for the rest of his life. He’ll never be able to get rid of her, for better or for worse. Probably better, since the alternatives are being alone or being with someone else. And it’s hard to think of anyone else when you’re kissing Britta Perry after a long, stressful day, and you can’t help but think that she feels like the home that you’ve spent your whole life searching for.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, please leave any thoughts/opinions/etc. down below!! I liked playing with this present tense style again, so let me know if you have any thoughts on it. also, shoutout to Yellow_Bird_On_Richland, whose fix-it of Basic Sandwich inspired this one!!
> 
> hope you guys are doing well and have an amazing day/afternoon/night!! <3


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